Not another post-apocalyptic western: Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow

I buy Gollancz’s SF Masterworks editions because I trust their editors to provide me with the best sf from the past century. I don’t expect their reprints to be classics all the time, but I do expect a decent read. Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow was a disappointment, but had a whumph in its tail. … Continue reading Not another post-apocalyptic western: Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow →

Oliver Rackham’s The History of the Countryside

Oliver Rackham is the subject of this week's Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up. He wrote a lovely and really rather long History of the Countryside, which came out in 1986. I gobbled it down with great enthusiasm when I first read it, because then I was working in archaeology, and was very much into … Continue reading Oliver Rackham’s The History of the Countryside →

Greer Gilman’s Cloud and Ashes: An Interim Reading

I’ve struggled hard to get through Cloud & Ashes by Greer Gilman. I’ve already written about her seventeenth-century historical novellas starring Ben Jonson, which I consider completely brilliant. Cloud & Ashes is different, in that its setting is pre-industrial, magical and timeless, rather than in the English court of James I and VI. Its three … Continue reading Greer Gilman’s Cloud and Ashes: An Interim Reading →

Hearty and manly: Robert Gibbings’ Sweet Thames Run Softly

This summer I have the great pleasure of cycling through Oxfordshire country lanes to get to work in the publishing archives that share a building with the Museum of English Rural Life, over the Berkshire border in Reading. I'm being immersed in English country sights, sounds and smells, and am enjoying it no end. (It … Continue reading Hearty and manly: Robert Gibbings’ Sweet Thames Run Softly →

Lemon in the sugar: Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine

This was a surprise. I picked up a paperback copy of this novel because I’ve been thinking for some time that I ought to be rereading Bradbury and bought the first one I found. I paid very little for it, because clumps of pages were already falling out: it was clearly a much loved copy. … Continue reading Lemon in the sugar: Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine →

Daughter of Delafield: R M Dashwood’s Provincial Daughter

If you like E M Delafield’s comic classic Diary of a Provincial Lady, you’ll like Provincial Daughter, because it’s written by her daughter, R M Dashwood, and she’s even funnier. This week in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up, I’ve been reading her story of a doctor’s wife in the late 1950s in Berkshire, … Continue reading Daughter of Delafield: R M Dashwood’s Provincial Daughter →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl

I posted a keen and enthusiastic review of Hope Jahren's Lab Girl a few days ago on Vulpes Libris: do go and read it! It's about science, plants, sexism, explosions, Minnesota determination and some bloody hard work writing funding applications to keep the lab going through bipolar interruptions because her lab technician is sleeping in a camper … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl →

Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle

This podcast scripts recap from Really Like This Book is a demure and joyous novel that begins by looking up a curate's trouser legs, Barbara Pym’s first novel, Some Tame Gazelle (1950). The middle-aged Belinda Bede lives with her younger sister Harriet in a comfortable house at the heart of English village and parish life. They … Continue reading Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle →